


Night Blindness

by storyplease



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ghosts, Horror, Other, liminal spaces
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 14:16:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14522427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyplease/pseuds/storyplease
Summary: It may be a cliche, but when you're broke and in college, free things seem far more enticing than any other time in your life. Perhaps that's why I consented to take part in the trial treatment.  It wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't worked, but it did. And, as it happens, it may have worked too well...





	Night Blindness

You could say that I don’t like to drive at night.

No, that’s not quite true, not quite strong enough.

I fucking _hate_ night driving.

I know what you’re saying. Night blindness is a bitch and a half, especially when you’re driving down a two lane road and someone flashes their high beams at you coming the opposite way. But that isn’t exactly why I avoid driving after the sun sets.  

First, however, you might need a bit of background.

I wasn’t always this way. My eyes used to be better when I was younger. I mean, ironically, I was basically blind. Had a prescription worse than most old ladies.  Had to wear those lenses so thick that they constantly slipped down the bridge of my nose no matter what I did because they were so heavy. I’ve heard _all_ of the insults.

 _Four-eyes_ is tame, by the way.

I was in college (and as sleep deprived and full of ramen as you are imagining the average college student to be) when a friend of a friend offered to get me in on this new and experimental eye treatment.  

“Completely non-surgical,” she said.

I told her that I was absolutely on board.

Before she brought this up, I _may_ have ranted a bit about the cost and weight of my ridiculously heavy glasses. We were at a party and both of us were a bit tipsy, so my memory’s a bit fuzzy after that point, but after I finished hugging the toilet in my shared apartment for dear life, I found a dog-eared business card in my pocket, and I thought what the heck? So I called them and made an appointment.

The office building I’d been directed to by the friendly woman on the phone was nondescript in such an unremarkable way that now, looking back on it, I don’t remember there being any actual signs other than the number on the glass door leading out of it.   At the time I was somewhere between a righteous paranoia that I was going to be forced to pay for something, or that the treatment was going to turn out to be something like raw sewage billed as “healing water” or some hocus pocus bullshit.

So when the cheerful receptionist handed me a clipboard with paperwork to fill out and sign, I read through the entire thing like I was trying to decipher a secret code.  The thing was, I couldn’t find anything that said anything about paying for the treatment, nor did I find any references to “healing crystals” or “reiki solar plexus punches.”

“So...this is legit, right?” I asked the nurse as she walked me back to the exam room.

“Well, you are part of a trial, so we do have to get all of your vitals as well as an eye exam,” she explained. “But I’ll leave it to the doctor to explain the specifics of the treatment.”

And so, I went through a generalized physical of sorts, including a blood draw to check for various things.  Thankfully, I didn’t have to be fasting, so at least I didn’t have to come back later after agonizing about having to deal with my needle phobia (which is, by the way, severe and one of the main reasons why I had not considered laser eye surgery before).

The doctor turned out to be a middle-aged woman with dark brown hair drawn back in a ponytail. Her skin was slightly lighter brown than her hair, and her eyes were golden and bright as she smiled at me.  “I am so glad that you are willing to participate in our trial! We’ve been trying to get the word out for the past month but a lot of people seem to think that it’s a scam or some kind of trick.”

“Well,” I said, feeling somewhat chastened, “in my experience, when something seems too good to be true, that’s because it is.”

“This is usually true, but this is not too good to be true,” she replied, pulling out a sheet of paper.  “There are possible side-effects, obviously, and you’ll have to come in every week to be poked and prodded and interviewed on how the treatment works for you.  Due to the non-invasive nature of the procedure, it will take, on average, four to six months of treatment before changes become permanent, which is daunting for many.”

“As long as I don’t have to get a needle in my eye, I think I can manage,” I said, crossing my arms.

At that point, she went into the long list of possible side effects, but if we’re being honest, most of them seemed to be on par with the potential side effects from taking ibuprofen from time to time.

After an eye exam that confirmed that I have some of the worst eyesight without being quite considered legally blind, I was given a bright blue bottle of eyedrops and an instructional sheet on how and when to use them, as well as a small lined notebook where I was to record the date and time I administered a dose, as well as a place to record comments.

Now, I’ll be honest.  I missed a few doses and fudged the numbers a bit out of embarrassment. I was sleep deprived, taking a full load of classes and working a job and a half, so I didn’t always have the best decision-making skills.

But none of that seemed to matter. By the end of the first week, my eyesight had improved so much that wearing my old glasses gave me headaches, and a literal weight was lifted from my life.  I was pretty much religious about administering it at the same time every day. Just two drops to each eye, blink and then dab around the eye to make sure the blue drops did not stain my skin. It stung a bit in my eyes, but no worse than the average redness relief eye drops. There was no scent, either.

Each week, I went in to report my results and get checked out by my doctor, whose name was Dr. Praesh.  Each time, she jotted down some notes, nodded approvingly, and gave me another bottle.

Three months into my treatment, something changed.

I was fixing dinner for myself when I saw a blurry form move in the corner of my eye. My first instinct was annoyance bordering on frustration.  I’d seen mice around the dumpsters in my apartment complex from time to time, but never in my living space. Stupidly, I grabbed the first thing I could find (a spatula), and ran over to where I’d seen the thing disappear behind the couch.

With a roar that I am still embarrassed to admit actually came from my mouth, I pushed the couch aside, expecting something completely different than what I saw.  There, standing, with half of its mist-gray body sticking through one of the legs of the couch, was something I had never seen before. My jaw dropped and the spatula fell to the floor as my arms went numb with shock.

A _ghost_.

A _mouse_ ghost, to be exact.

The creature blinked its partially transparent beady eyes at me and then had the audacity to clean its whiskers. I stomped loudly on the ground and it started, darting through the far wall before I could do anything else.

It started happening more regularly, but I didn’t want to say anything at first.  I blamed it on my penchant for sleep deprivation, or maybe something I ate. I didn’t want to consider the fact that I might slowly be going insane.  I even stopped the eye drops as a test to see if the visions would go away, but it did nothing to lessen the appearance of the shadows of the dead.

That’s the only term I can think of for it, but I’m sure that’s not right, either. There’s not a lot of science in classifying ghosts, especially when I’m the only one who seems to be able to see them.  They’re not like the sort of ghosts you imagine from movies or books. They don’t attack anyone, and in fact often act as though they are going about their regular business without any mind to what is going on around them.   I’ve seen deliverymen step through the body of a sleeping cat’s ghost easy as you please. The ghost didn’t even twitch its tail. They generally appear in a fine, gray mist in the shape of what they were in life with a hint of skeletal features underneath if I look close enough, as though the mist is a thin membrane over their bones.

When I went to the clinic a few months later (after avoiding going due to paranoia as I tried to exhaust every other possibility), the number on the front was gone, leaving a dark outline in paint where it had been, and the office was locked and empty when I peered through the glass door.  All attempts to get ahold of the research group turned up nothing. I did, however, receive a strange message on my phone from an unknown masked number. I didn’t pick it up because I generally assume they’re telemarketers, but the message was a full minute long, which is unusual for a telemarketer call.  It was someone speaking in a hushed voice, as though they were talking to someone else that I couldn’t hear and accidentally recorded the message.

This is a written transcript of that message:

“I know. I know. It’s not like we knew that was going to be the case.  It only happens in 20% of clients. Of _course_ I had them sign the wavers. They knew the risks!  Besides, most only have minor symptoms, and can’t interact with the spectors, or vice versa.  Oh, hello. Sorry about that. This is just a friendly message to let you know that you can discontinue the usage of your test product. All data has been received and the study is over. If you should experience any side effects, they should dissipate within the next few weeks.  We thank you for your time and your patience. Oh. Right. And, whatever you do, if you see them, don’t touch them. They will see you. And if your eyes meet, it’s over.”

After listening to the message, I was vaguely creeped out, but then I reminded myself that it was also possible that I’d just been pranked or spammed or some other thing that my brain was having a hard time justifying with a rational explanation.

The good news is that it’s hard to see them in the day time.  There are fewer out and about as well— the sunlight seems to bother them.  They tend to congregate in the places where they died, so for many small creatures, that means the streets, especially country roads.  When it gets to be evening, I will see a glowing parade of animals walking in the road, though they tend to run out of the way when they hear a car, which is ironic considering that they likely died because they forgot to do so in life.

The bad news is that driving at night, especially in the freeways and cities, is a nightmare.  The small animals aren’t so bad, though there are many. Phantom birds preen in the middle of a four lane highway. Skunks play with their ghostly babies on the side of a thoroughfare.  A large, rotund, and very transparent raccoon shakes its fist at me and runs off chittering silently into the bushes by the local levy. Most are far too small to pass through the bottom of my car.

The animals are what they are.  They keep to themselves in death as they would in life and I do not fear them. In a way, they’ve become endearing.

The problem are the others...the ones that loom tall and flare bright gray like matchsticks with a grinning skull at the head.  They wander en masse, across every road, and I must avert my eyes whenever I see a small one, because I know what that means.

At one time, they must have been human.  They must have had hopes, dreams, fears. There are so many that roam the streets.  And every time my car passes through one and it, in turn, passes through me in some small way— a hand, a head, a torso— it is only a few moments later that I hear the telltale clicking sound as their heads turn, and they _see_ me.  It is a game, then of keeping my head down, of not returning that gaze.  

They pour across the road in the darkness, and I must not look, must not engage.  

Must not think of the sensation of a cold hand touching the back of my neck.

When they follow me, their finger bones click, sending a telltale shiver down the back of my spine and into the primal part of my mind that makes my grasp on reality slip just a little.  But soon, they grow disinterested, and move on.

So, all in all, I’d rate this product a solid 8 out of 10. I don’t need prescription glasses anymore, and even my regular optometrist is impressed at how well I score on vision tests nowadays. But I did have to mark it down by 2 points due to the whole “seeing the wraith-like spirits that try to follow me and likely do something awful if I meet their eye sockets with my own” thing.

And I still fucking hate driving at night.


End file.
